(November 21, 2022 at 8:29 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Yes, Augustone does matter because it directly refutes the point you were making. There are important early Christians that did not consider Genesis a literal account. Augustine is one.
That is just not true. Augustine only didn't think that the creation of the universe lasted six days but one moment, he took literally everything after that. He thought Adam and Eve really existed and that original sin was transmitted by semen from Adam till now.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"